Coming back to blogging after a long eventful time

I have been away from this blog for some time and we have had some big changes in our lives. We are now parents of two, not one. The pregnancy was hard and complicated and I nearly lost her more than once. I got thrown into trying to balance homeschool and life for my first child while having a baby then toddler.

We found our youngest is one of the growing number of children who have life threatening food allergies. Hers are so severe that she can be affected with airborne particles of the food. All of the sudden our diet and eating out habits changed and we had one anaphylatic episode. I have learned to be a vigilant ingredient reader, a health advocate for my toddler, and I can train anyone to administer an epi pen. I am glad we had already established our homeschool. I feel as though at least that rhythm was established when we got the news that it would be very hard for our youngest to attend a traditional school.

In 2013 my mother passed away suddenly, and my heart was broken for a long time. We were close and at the time I was pregnant with my second child, and I mourned the relationship she would never have with her grandmother. When she passed I noticed that my father might have some memory issues, but he was in his mid eighties and there is a certain amount of age related memory loss that is normal and expected. Then he was falling a lot. He was unable to keep up himself, his house, and was confused by tasks that were routine the month before.

It was obvious he needed help. The only problem is he did not want my help. He wanted his independence and freedom and would strike down all assistance I tried to line up for him. I now know this is all part of the dementia. Unfortunately our society is not set up to deal with the needs of the very elderly or dementia patients. The law said he was an adult and he could make poor decisions or not take proper care of himself as long as he did not hurt anyone else. Essentially the social programs that are in place to help people failed my father and many other elderly people.

This year he fell for the 20th time in a calendar year and he finally listened to the heeding of the doctors that he could no longer live alone. So now at almost 90 he lives with us. He seems to be adjusting well, and my children enjoy having him here.  I care for him and try to help him with the issues associated with his dementia.

The blog in the next few weeks and months will continue to include frugal food options, and homeschool tips and stories, but it will also include stories from our life.

As a family that has a tight budget
As a family that struggles with the challenges associated with life threatening food allergies
As a homeschool family that pulls from many resources
As a caregiver caring for some one with dementia and Alzheimers
As the family of a veteran working with the services available
As children of God trying to walk the plan he has laid out for us

Homeschooling on a budget

I will admit I am new to homeschool, and my child is very young, so what works for us may not work for your family. I have searched for and found lots of resources on homeschooling for free or at low cost (without jeopardizing your child's education of course.
Right now the free resources we use regularly are
1-The Library
Our local library has an art and story time for children my daughter's age that she really likes and a lot of the books I use with her come from there are well. Also, luckily our local branch has a large selection of homeschooling books, from many different methods.
2- The Internet-
This one is vast, and there are many sites I like, here are a few.
Starfall  http://www.starfall.com/ is a phonics early reading site that both my daughter and I like, and in part is the reason she knows her ABCs in capital and lowercase and phonetically before age 2. It is an amazing site and will follow through with her to early reading.

DLTK has lots and lots of printables and coloring pages.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/

Ambelside Online is an entire K-12 free Charlotte Mason curriculum.
http://www.amblesideonline.org/

Prekinders is a great site for both resources and ideas.

http://prekinders.com/

3. Other Homeschoolers

I have a few links on my blog for other bloggers that homeschool and often they have lessons available at reasonable prices or for free.

Overall, like just about everything else, you can spend lots of money homeschooling on boxed curriculum and the like, but right now we are really enjoying the free resources we have access to and she is learning quickly and well.

Homeschooling

I know it has been forever since I posted anything, but I am going to try and do a bit better. This summer the family was sick a lot, and then I started homeschooling my daughter which takes some adjustment time. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of writing the blog too.

We started homeschooling at the beginning of September, and we are both getting our feet on the ground with learning to be a teacher and student as well as a mom and daughter. My husband and I decided to homeschool her for a variety of reasons, but most of them have to do with a lack of faith in the public school system. We believe that she deserves the best education possible and we don't believe that she will get that in a public school with all the inherent problems of meeting testing standards and teachers having to do crowd control more than teach. I intend to write a more detailed account of why we homeschool at some point, but for now I will just say we know this is best for our family right now.

We homeschool between 1 and 1/2 to 3 hours a day, 4 days a week as my daughter is not quite 2 yet and any more than that seems to be too much for her. Right now I am trying to establish the basics she will need for PreK. We have six subjects (English, Math, Science, Bible/Character, Art, and Physical Education) that we work on in the week with some having more emphasis than others depending on what needs work.

I will say that there have been some challenges, like trying to keep things interesting and age appropriate for a toddler. She loves art, and is doing really well with her alphabet and pre-reading. Math is hard for her, but the concept of numbers is abstract, so I think that will iron out in time.

I am constantly on the look out of for cirricula and activities that I think she will like, or that can make a tedious subject more fun. There are a lot of great blogs out there, and we are starting to get involved in homeschool groups. In NC you don't have to legally declare that you are homeschooling till your child is 7, but some of the homeschoolers have little brothers and sisters that she is getting a chance to do activities with.

More updates and pictures to come soon!